On Discord, my blog, and Facebook we’ve had brilliant champions correctly guess what fairy tale Hall of Blood and Mercy is based on, so I decided to confirm! It’s…
Yes, Donkeyskin–a tale that is equal parts icky and charming.
Not gonna lie to you, Champions, when you first started asking for a retelling of this one roughly two years ago, I wasn’t going to touch it with a ten-foot-pole due to some of the content in the original story. (The dead giveaway is the icky-ness that is the Father deciding to marry his daughter.) But the more I chewed it over, the more I thought I could change up the icky parts a bit and have a whole lot of fun with the story if I really explored the relationship between the princess and the prince, and how it evolved as a result of the plot.
Rather that go into detail here, in a future post I’m going to take an in depth look at the original story–so ya’ll can see why I didn’t want to plunk it down in my Timeless Fairy Tales world, ugh.
I did change the story a lot–as you know from the description both of Hazel’s parents are dead. But what didn’t fit in the description is that the wizard who betrays her initially tries to blackmail her into marrying him, which is why she runs, just as the heroine from the original Donkeyskin tale runs from an unwanted marriage.
It’s been so much fun revealing bits and pieces of this series. I had a great time–though I know some of you would say all the teasing was awful, hahah. (Going over the Donkeyskin fairytale will be a lot of…’fun.’ I can’t wait to hear what you guys think of that in a future post!) Next week I have some really big news about the book/series that will (hopefully) blow you away! 😉 So stay tuned!